The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

We’ll search the perimeter indicated by Scipio while others search the interior.”

I shot out a cable and yanked myself away from where a beam cut across the path, slipping my slim form through the narrow gap between the beam and the wall, leaving the wider space for Gerome’s muscular form. Once I was past it, I took the time to answer. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient if we split up?” I yelled back.

“We’re not splitting up.”

I winced, and for a moment I was all too aware of the low number on my wrist. Of course Gerome wouldn’t want me to go off on my own now.

“Yes, sir.”

Coming to a halt in the plunge was never easy, but Gerome managed it nicely, throwing a hand in either direction so that the lashes he shot out caught the walls simultaneously, at the same elevation. He came to a halt just above the exit we needed to take, which was little more than a door-shaped hole.

I speared one lash to the top of the exit and shot past Gerome through the narrow space, throwing another lash up and back to catch the doorframe as I passed through. I eased the latch and the cord gave a gentle pull at my wrist, slowing me until I landed, feet skidding along the ground.

Behind me, Gerome eased himself through the doorway. “Being flashy will get you killed,” he grunted. “We have procedures for entering and exiting the plunge for a reason, Squire Castell.”

I wanted to make a face but held the impulse in, opting for a curt nod instead. It never seemed to matter that I could do things nobody else could. My expertise, and what I could accomplish with it, meant nothing in the face of the immutability of the Tower. It was all I could do not to scream sometimes.

Gerome strode off and I fell into line behind him, my boots slapping moodily against the floor.

“So, what do we know about this guy?” I asked, trying not to think about the fact that my own dossier had just been flagged and passed on to the Medica. Gerome would have the information on the individual we were looking for—sent along with our orders.

Sure enough, he pulled a small, pen-like device from his pocket and held it up to one side. An image flared into view over it: a picture and several lines of text.

“Grey Farmless,” he said, reading off the information. “Citizen designation 49xF-91. Looks like he was initially raised by the farmers but his parents petitioned the Department Head to drop him and they did.”

I blinked, looking at the face with renewed interest. Getting dropped by your parents was a rare occurrence, but it did happen. When a parent simply couldn’t take their own child’s presence, or else thought them a bad influence on their floor, they could “drop” the child, essentially rendering them homeless to go find a new floor. It was extremely rare for any Hand to drop their own children, which made me curious.

In the picture, Grey’s mouth was twisted into the smallest of frowns, his soft, dark brown eyes staring intently toward the camera. His hair was a light brown or dark blond—it was hard to really tell—and his square jaw framed lips set at a slight scowl. He wasn’t classically handsome, but there was something sultry in the dry disdain of his features that made my heart skip a beat, and I quickly pushed the feeling back—it was woefully unprofessional. There was something else stamped into his features. It was subtle, but there: a bitterness—that I couldn’t help but recognize in myself.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Why did they drop him?”

Gerome scrolled through the notes.

“Doesn’t say,” he replied eventually. “I do see that his number dropped before it happened, though. Might have just been natural prejudice against a dangerous element.” I shoved my right hand behind my back, biting my retort clean in half. Picking a fight with Gerome about calling the lower numbers “dangerous elements” made about as much sense as saving Dalton had, and I was done doing stupid things today.

The search proved boring. Water Maintenance was a fascinating process, or so I’d been told. Intricate, delicate, and deeply scientific, the mesh of vein-like pipes kept the Tower from dying of thirst, grew our crops, and provided energy. This floor, however, held nothing of the supposed majesty of the profession. Everywhere I looked it was pipes, pipes and more pipes. Some glass, some metal, they tangled together into complex and intricate knots with only sparse room left for walkways to wind between them.

“Why would someone even be in here?” I asked, using a lash to tug myself up and over a particularly large pipe that had been built directly across the footpath.

Gerome pulled himself up over the same pipe without so much as a grunt.

“It makes sense,” he said. “Good place to hide. Not to mention, these pipes go into the Depths.”

I cocked my head at that. The Depths, as the council had taken to calling them, were a series of caverns and maintenance shafts at the base of the Tower. Supposedly they had become too irradiated to inhabit, but sometimes people would talk about undocs, the undocumented citizens of the Tower, hiding down there. It didn’t seem likely to me. If there were people down there, surely the council would have done something about them by now. Besides, there was nothing to live off of in the dark, under-powered floors that made up the Depths.

As I was contemplating the idea of someone actually trying to live down there, a figure emerged from behind a nearby pipe.

I froze, looking him up and down. He was taller than I’d imagined from the picture, and better built. Also, his hair was a little lighter, and he looked more rugged; a layer of stubble had grown along his jaw. All the same, this was our guy. I raised a hand, but found myself momentarily speechless as his intense brown eyes